A Canadian graduate student has come up with a revolutionary way to remove your tattoos by applying a simple cream, CNN has learned.
No longer will people have to live with the constant reminder of the drunken decision to get a tattoo of a former significant other's name. With Ph.D. student Alec Falkenham's cream, the body's own skin-rejuvenating process is sped up to help tattoos fade faster.
Falkenham, who is studying pathology at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, said it was his own tattoos that inspired him to develop the patent technology called Bisphosphonate Liposomal Tattoo Removal.
"This idea started when I got my first tattoo and I was thinking of the tattoo process from an immune point of view," Falkenham, who has no regrets being inked, said according to CNN. "Since then, I have added three more and currently don't regret any of them- but that's probably a reflection on me waiting until I was older."
Tattoos naturally fade over time, a process made possible by white blood cells called macrophages that consume ink pigment once it comes in contact with the skin. The ink-filled macrophages are eventually replaced by new ones and the pigment gets transferred from the tattoo area to the lymph nodes.
Falkenham's cream works by manipulating those macrophages to speed up the fading process, CNN reported.
Results from preliminary research with the cream were promising. But it's not yet ready to go on the market, which is unfortunate for this guy who got the word "criminal" tattooed across his forehead, or this guy with "666" also inked on his face.
